Privacy advocates are getting a kick out of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' claim that he's a victim of the sprawling surveillance state he helped create.
Bezos claims The National Enquirer threatened to publish intimate photos of he and his mistress unless he opened up about his own company's conduct.
“It does smack as a bit ironic that Jeff Bezos' data model is to know as much as he can about customers for his service, and combining data from social media, from Internet search, from Amazon's own internal operations,” says Dr. Chris Bronk , associate director of the University of Houston's Center for Information Security Research and Education.
Bezos has attributed his situation to President Donald Trump's relationship with The National Enquirer . Meanwhile, one of the largest components of Amazon’s business is working with the Pentagon and NSA on facial recognition and other surveillance weapons.
“Amazon expects us to entrust them with the custodianship of our data on their Amazon web services platform, and it is amusing that their CEO's cell phone transactions or text messages were shared with the world,” says Bronk.